Assessing the PM10 emission potential of sandy, dryland soils in South Africa using the PI-SWERL

The Free State has been identified as the region with the most dust sources in South Africa. These dust sources can be linked with the large, heavily cultivated cropland areas in this province, which leaves fields vulnerable to wind erosion after the harvest in the winter. For this study, the focus was on the factors that influence the emission from bare, flat surfaces on agricultural lands in this region. The Portable In-Situ Wind Erosion Laboratory (PI-SWERL) was used to measure the emission flux from adjacent crusted and loose surfaces, which was combined with shear strength, moisture, and soil texture measurements. Boosted regression tree (BRT) analyses were used to identify the variable with the highest relevance on the emission flux.

On the whole dataset, that the shear strength is the most important variable that controls the emission. This is reflected in the significantly lower emission from the crusted surfaces (0.49 mg m⁻² s⁻¹) compared to that of loose surfaces (2.34 mg m⁻² s⁻¹). However, for crusted surfaces, the presence of abraders appeared to be the most significant factor in emission, showing a power relationship between the abrader count and the emission flux (R² = 0.76). In the case of the loose surfaces, the presence of clay and silt was a major influence in emissivity, with a linear relationship between the two variables (R² = 0.68). This difference in factors depending on the agricultural disturbance, asks for a more holistic approach when predicting emission from such arid cropland areas.